MLB All Star Game 2011: How Bud Selig Should Spice Up Midsummer Classic

With the Home Run Derby decided and the Legends and Celebrity Soft Ball Game mercifully out of the way, the pomp and circumstance of the MLB All-Star Weekend will finally give way to tonight's Midsummer Classic.

Whether anyone cares enough to tune in remains to be seen.

It's no secret that baseball's All-Star Game, like that of any major American sport, has endured a significant, if not serious, dive in popularity and viewership in the last decade or so.

It is, however, a bit more tragic in baseball's case, given the longstanding history and tradition of the Midsummer Classic as far and away the best All-Star showcase of them all, with more than enough excitement and enthusiasm from the fans in the stands and at home to match the pageantry and magic put forth by the league and their players on the field. The picture has grown particularly glum this year, with 16 players, including perennial participants like Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Ryan Braun, turning down their invitations, with only five doing so due to injuries that have warranted placement on their respective team's disabled list.

Some attribute the demise of All-Star games in general to the advent of free agency, which has spurred a rash of player movement that, over the years, has made it difficult for fans to attach team loyalty to the players who wear the uniforms, given that they are so often on the move from one city to another.

Others look to the institution of Interleague play during the regular season as another key factor that has slowly but surely degraded the interest in and importance of the Midsummer Classic.

Attempting to understand what caused the demise of baseball's All-Star Game is one thing, but how can that trend be reversed? Here are some suggestions that commissioner Bud Selig should look into as ways to revive this once proud and much-loved tradition. 

Focus on Fans, Fun and Rewarding Players

First and foremost, Bud and MLB vice president Joe Torre need to make sure that the All-Star Game is about fans and fun.

Of course, everything baseball does needs to hold the fan experience in high esteem; without people watching on TV and filling up the stands, baseball would not exist as a major sport in America.

If Selig wants fans to tune in again, he needs to make sure the game is fun to watch, particularly on TV, as the Midsummer Classic has become something of a clunker in recent years in which the contest is a snooze for the first six or seven innings until the players decide to wake up and play for real.

Not that the players don't care—the ones who show up most certainly want to put forth their best effort while they're out there—but rather that, on the whole, the game needs to return to its former ways as a showcase of the best players from each league playing against each other that rewards both the fans for tuning in and the participants for their stellar play during the first half of the baseball season, like it used to be.

Forget About Home Field Advantage

That effort to restore the Midsummer Classic to its former glory must begin with one simple quick fix of what was originally a quick fix in and of itself.

Eliminate the home-field advantage in the World Series aspect of the game.

It's a ruse, a gimmick, a cursory attempt by Bud Selig to paper over the mistake he made in ending the 2002 All-Star Game in a tie while feebly drawing in fans by adding meaning to a showcase, sacrificing a shred of importance from the regular season in the process.

To no one's surprise, the game's TV ratings have plummeted since, careening to an all-time low with a 7.1 share and 12.1 million viewers last year, representing a significant drop even from the 2002 edition, which drew a 9.5 rating and a 17 share.

Clearly, the numbers haven't changed for the better.

Neither of those numbers can hold a candle to the all-time high from the 1970 All-Star Game, which drew a 28.5 rating and a 54 share when the game didn't count for anything of substance.

Sniffing ratings anywhere close to those figures to be an uphill battle for MLB going forward, but the simplest and surest step to take on the long and arduous path back to relevance for the Midsummer Classic must begin by stripping the game of actual significance, ironic as that may seem.

Emphasize Style over Substance

Stripping the All-Star Game of its current implications would allow the managers in the game to play whoever they want whenever they want to please the fans while, most importantly, giving the players free reign to show off the considerable skills that made them All-Stars in the first place in a way that people don't typically get to see on a day-to-day basis.

Attempting to give the game some sort of external significance forces managers to actually manage, like they would on any other night, which sounds all well and good on the surface.

Until you consider that such an approach includes the use of sacrifices and hit-and-run plays, which may please diehard followers but don't exactly titillate casual fans, who just so happen to be the types of fans that baseball needs and is attempting to reach out to right now with all of their gimmicky machinations.

Rather than forcing managers to strategize and players to stick to fundamentals, MLB needs to simply give the teams free reign to really put on a show.

Let the hitters swing for the fences, the rabbits scamper on the base paths, defenders make spectacular plays in the field and the pitchers show off triple-digit fastballs and sharp-diving curveballs.

Think back to the 2002 Midsummer Classic. What was more exciting to watch—Torii Hunter robbing Barry Bonds of a home run or Bud calling the game after 11 innings?

In short, fans want style rather than substance from the All-Star Game. 

Cut Down the Rosters

To get players to really go all out and make the All-Star Game the summer showcase it once was, MLB needs to make sure that being selected actually means something to the players, which would be most easily achieved by reducing the number of players selected to each roster.

All told, 84 players were selected as All-Stars this year—34 for each league from the outset and 16 more to fill in for those who either couldn't participate due to injury (i.e. Alex Rodriguez, Shane Victorino, Jose Reyes) or pitching on Sunday (i.e. C.C. Sabathia, James Shields, Cole Hamels), or willfully declined as a result of "fatigue" or "previously scheduled engagements" (i.e. Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Aramis Ramirez).

That total is the most ever in the history of the Midsummer Classic and means that one in 10 players in all of baseball were extended invitations to play at Chase Field on Tuesday.

Really now, are one in 10 players really All-Star worthy? Especially during a season in which hitters are suffering at the plate like it's the 1960s all over again?

And that doesn't even include superstars like Albert Pujols and Ichiro Suzuki, who are both having substandard seasons thus far.

If baseball doesn't want to see fan-selected stalwarts like "Mr. November" turning down invitations, it needs to trim down the rosters. Consider that up until the month of September, teams are only allowed to carry 25 players on their roster.

Sure, there should be more than 25 players chosen per league, but certainly not NINE more! With smaller rosters, selections would be more meaningful because they would be more difficult to attain, which would presumably cause those who are chosen to approach the game with greater reverence. 

More Skills Competitions

Going back to the issue of style over substance and expanding the window of consideration to the entire All-Star Weekend, MLB might do well to consider spicing up the break with some more skills competitions.

No, not long, drawn-out yawners like the Home Run Derby has become.

Instead, how about simple showcases like longest toss, fastest pitch or best bunt?

If Bryce Harper, the phenomenal prospect for the Washington Nationals who currently plays at the Double-A level, can create a stir by throwing a baseball 500 feet while no one is watching in between innings at the Futures Game, then why shouldn't big-armed fielders like Josh Hamilton and Matt Kemp get a chance to chuck a ball as hard and as far as they can from the warning track to home plate?

If the managers are going to invite no-name relievers like Jose Valverde and Craig Kimbrel to the party, then why not put their flame-throwing skills on display?

Yes, you could make the injury argument here, but if these guys are going to throw cheddar during the All-Star Game, which shouldn't and really doesn't mean anything, then why should they be disbarred from doing so in a skills competition?

Shorten the Home Run Derby

I've already alluded to the fact that the Home Run Derby is too long, but allow me to expand on that point for just a moment.

ESPN's coverage of this annual glorified round of batting practice lasts about three hours and 15 minutes. If you allow for, say, 20 minutes of pregame coverage and 20 more for the postgame, which is a generous allotment to begin with, the event still boils down to a whopping two hours and 35 minutes of watching soft toss, punctuated occasionally by a 400+ foot home run accompanied by the obligatorily loud and obnoxious comment by Chris Berman.

The first round took more than an hour and a half on its own, with most of the participants finishing with five or fewer dingers and nobody cracking double digits, rendering the proceedings more painful than powerful.

Aside from watching Robinson Cano smack pitches from his father into the most obscure crevices at Chase Field, the most entertaining portion of the competition was easily the "swing-off" following the first round to decide who, from amongst a group of three, would fill in the other two spots in the second round. Matt Holliday flopped, but David Ortiz and Prince Fielder used the opportunity to show off the formidable home run hitting skills that made them the previous two Derby champions, taking their time to put together solid swings rather than flailing wildly at whatever pitch came their way, as has become characteristic of the normal rounds.

Thus, to make the Home Run Derby more interesting AND less time-consuming, the powers that be in MLB would do well to expand the use of "swing-off" rules to the rest of the competition.  

Reduce or Eliminate Interleague Play

The one big thing that MLB could do to restore the All-Star Game to its former glory, that people have been shouting about for years to change anyway, is to cut down on regular season Interleague play, if not eliminate it entirely.

Part of what made the Midsummer Classic so exciting was the rare opportunity it gave fans to see stars from the American League and the National League on the very same field. Such a privilege was only afforded to the game at the half-way mark and in the World Series.

Now, every team plays two weeks-worth of games against clubs from the opposite league, yielding "classic" match-ups like Pirates-Royals and Blue Jays-Padres while driving regional rivalries like Yankees-Mets, Cubs-White Sox and Dodgers-Angels into the ground with repetition.

By eliminating Interleague play, MLB would essentially kill two birds with one stone—restore some significance to the All-Star Game and cut out a chunk of meaningless games from the regular season—while potentially shortening what is already an all-too-long schedule.